


The Message

by cat_77



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, High Warlock of Brooklyn Magnus Bane, Injury, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 08:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16678375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_77/pseuds/cat_77
Summary: “Hey, Magnus, it’s me.  I know you’re still doing your thing and probably won’t get this message for a bit.  I, um, just wanted to let you know I don’t think I’m going to be home for breakfast.  Just needed...  Just wanted to say I love you.  I’m sorry.”





	The Message

_“Hey, Magnus, it’s me. I know you’re still doing your thing and probably won’t get this message for a bit. I, um, just wanted to let you know I don’t think I’m going to be home for breakfast. Just needed... Just wanted to say I love you. I’m sorry.”_

Magnus listened to the message with a frown. He had learned very early on in his relationship with Alexander that a Shadowhunter’s late nights could very easily turn into early mornings. It really wasn’t that unusual. He had grown almost accustomed to the random texts and voicemails, often received at odd hours and with little details included. A mission ran long. The Clave decided to be assholes. Isabelle and Clary managed to set fire to something again. Anything, really, was possible.

So he had no idea why this one had him on edge.

He glanced at the time stamp and found it to be just after eleven the night prior. It was now just before two in the morning, New York time at least, and he had finally portalled home to a decidedly empty loft and decided to check his messages. The wards and ley lines around where he had been working did not lend themselves well to modern forms of communication so he hadn’t even felt the vibration of the call all those hours ago.

He started to strip off the near ritualistic garb he had been wearing and tried to think just what about the message bothered him.

There was a breathlessness to it all, but if he had been running out the door that was easily explained. The hollow echo of the not quite there background noise was different, but could have meant a warehouse or tunnel. The tone. The intonation. Each word precise yet said almost shortly. Clipped. Not anger though. Not quite frustration either.

He replayed the message.

Pain.

Alexander was hurt. Injured already. But had not mentioned it. Had not asked for assistance.

He called and it rang through to voicemail. He called again and got the same. He waited the requisite ten minutes as usually he’d get a call back or at least a text unless Idris was involved and Alec would always warn him of those visits in advance.

He swiped through to a different contact and pressed connect. This one picked up on the third ring. “Blondie, I know it’s a ridiculous hour, but where is your parabatai?”

“M-Magnus?” a hesitant and decidedly non-male voice replied. A sniff, something that might resemble a whimper, and then a very shaky voice said, “Something is wrong. Very, very wrong.”

Any tiredness from his journey was washed away in an instant with those words. “Biscuit?” he confirmed, recognizing her voice despite how simply not-her it sounded. “What happened?”

“Can, can you come here?” Clary asked. It was followed by another sniff.

“Of course, darling,” he assured her, already doing a quick spell to verify against his instincts that it was her and not an imposter. “I’ll meet you at the front entrance.”

“We’re not at the Institute,” she said quickly. “Jace’s stele is broke and I can’t find mine and I didn’t realize it until Izzy left to try to find Alec. I called in but don’t even know where we are right now, to be honest, so they were going to try to track us; my phone’s still open to Ops right now and-”

“Breathe, Clary,” he ordered as each word brought her closer to hyperventilation. “I will find you. Just give me a moment.”

He heard a wheeze that he assumed was her trying to regain control of a basic function of life. “Please. Please hurry,” was all she asked.

He was hesitant to hang up but could hear the other phone in the background demanding her attention. With that in mind, he did a quick search of the loft and found something he could use to track her. Technically they were his own supplies but technically he kept them solely for when she was over and got the itch to sketch something. He hoped that convincing himself that they therefore belonged to her would be enough. It was that, or dig through his boyfriend’s clothing knowing he probably had a t-shirt or three that were actually his surrogate brother’s. He grabbed something of Alec’s anyway because the words “find Alec” echoed in his brain and he only hoped that he didn’t end up needing to search for dear Isabelle as well.

He opened a portal to what he thought was a likely location given the tracking spell and a quick and dirty magical hack of Jace’s phone. Large. Barren. Dark. Enough metal to explain the signal bounce. But in a far corner was a flicker of light. No, the light did not flicker, that stayed steady. The form in front of the light stood, weapons at the ready, posture barely relaxing when she saw who it was.

Magnus approached cautiously, searching for traps as much as clues as to what in Lilith’s name was going on. What he found was a whole lot of nothing, and Jace crumpled at Clary’s feet. “What happened?” he demanded.

He let Clary take a breath to steady herself before she reported, “There was an energy surge followed by what looked like a lot of demonic activity, so we went to investigate. We handled most of the demons no problem, but then the warlock controlling them showed up.”

“Is that Bane?” a tinny voice echoed in the emptiness. “Can he tell where you are? We can get a team to you in a matter of minutes if we can pinpoint your location.”

“This is Magnus,” he confirmed. “I will open a portal as soon as I am convinced they are safe to move.”

“Jace,” Clary said, her voice wavering on even that single word. “I can’t get him to wake up.” She seemed impervious to her own visible injuries, if she even realized she had any.

Magnus crouched next to the unconscious form, adding a protective barrier around them on the off chance they were still at risk. He let the magic flow from his fingertips as he tried to assess just where the man was injured, and couldn’t help but be confused by his findings. He barely had a scratch on him, yet body had almost short circuited from the pain and shock of it all.

Alexander.

The parabatai rune damn near glowed and the parabatai to his lover lay near comatose before him. The implication was clear. And damning.

“What happened?” he asked again. He hadn’t kept the worry from his tone but, then again, he hadn’t really tried.

“Alec had been up there,” Clary said with a rough gesture to a slightly higher platform in the abandoned industrial plant they found themselves in. “Jace and I couldn’t quite land anything on the warlock, but Alec did. Shot him right... Anyway, there was a blast and then Alec was falling and then there was a portal. Alec had his seraph blade out and the warlock and he... They both went through the portal and then Jace collapsed.”

Magnus rested a hand on her arm and found it to be shaking despite the way she fought so hard to control herself. “I will find him,” he promised, and really hoped he wasn’t lying. “You need to get Jace back to the Institute. Call Isabelle, tell her to return until I have more information. There’s no need to put more of you at risk.”

“But-”

He cut her off with a snap of his fingers. A portal appeared behind her and she frowned. He really hoped she had enough juice left in whatever runes she may have activated before the fight because he had precisely no intention of following her and being corralled by the security forces while they determined what they felt was the best approach to find his lover. Instead, he helped get the dead weight that was Jace to his feet and get her under him as a support. She opened her mouth to no doubt ask how she was supposed to shuffle him through on her own, so he pulled the portal to them and watched as they disappeared to leave him alone in his quest.

A quick search showed nothing he could use to track where the warlock’s portal had ended up. No trace energy, not even a scrap of fabric or drop of blood as it had been too long. He took the washcloth from his pocket and tried to track Alec directly instead. The result was hazy, unclear. It could have been half a dozen places easily enough. 

He replayed the message.

A scrape. An echo. What might have been a drip of water.

He tried the same spell he had used on Jace’s phone on Alec’s and narrowed down his options, cross referenced them with what the tracking spell hinted at. He opened a portal and stepped through. Too loud, too many people, too much of everything. He tried again.

This time, he stepped through into darkness. There was the smell of damp and the tang of metal. There was also the salty musk that he tended to associate with blood.

One conjured light later, and he had found the warlock who was most definitely not one of his constituents. Or rather what was left of him. Sliced through with a wound that could only come from a seraph blade. He still had an arrow embedded in his shoulder and another in his knee as well in case there was any doubt as to who had done the deed.

There were scorch marks though. One final pulse as the warlock attempted to at least take his murderer with him and Magnus really hoped he failed in that task. Based on the way one purple-tinged hand was outreached, he followed the line into an abyss. The light reflected oddly and he saw the wall and a good portion of the floor of what appeared to be storage building of some kind had been completely blown away. He stepped forward carefully, the debris shifting under his feet.

Not storage. Shipping. Loading and unloading the massive barges. Not active and, based on the dust and the rot, possibly not for quite some time. He pushed all of that aside though as he positioned the light to look downwards, the sharp edges of metal and wood at his toes. 

He half expected to find Alec below him. He more than half wished he had. There was a glint and he jumped down the story and a half or so to investigate, barely remembering to cushion the landing until it was almost too late. What he found was not his Alexander. It was, however, his phone.

Abandoned on the concrete, pieces of the case around it. The screen was cracked and there were smears of red drying to brown across it. Fingerprints in case he didn’t recognize the case or the shattered image when he tried to unlock it.

Alec had called him. Alec had his phone and used it only a short while ago. Alec had to be near.

The light was superfluous to the way his heart as a whole pulled to the left. To the subtle vibration of magic. To the ripple of color across his lover’s lax body.

He reached forward without thinking and had his fingertips singed for his efforts. Incapacitation spell. Not just a blast then. The warlock must have used everything he had left, thrown it with abandon. But it still didn’t add up.

Magnus was High Warlock for a reason. He might have been tired and drained after a day of doing non-stop magic followed by everything he had done since he heard the damning call, but his reserves had reserves and he readied himself to call upon those to break the spell, right up until he saw the bubbles of blood from half-formed wounds. A Stetos spell. Maybe a Capanin as well. Not quite stasis and not quite not. The warlock might not have been exacting in his final moments, the two spells melding to create what may well have stopped the Shadowhunter from bleeding out.

Knowing what he was up against, and knowing the washcloth in his pocket wasn’t going to be enough to staunch the flow once released, he fished out his phone and made a call. “I shall be there momentarily. We will need a medic,” he said shortly, not willing to argue the point. He hung up and shoved the device back in his pocket.

Prepared now, to some extent, he called upon everything he had and really hoped there was not an opportunistic Shadowhunter ready to off him while he was about to be at possibly the weakest he had ever let anyone see him. A breath, and then he let the power flow. Break the spell. Cast another to staunch what he could at least momentarily. Open the portal. Hope for the best.

They arrived just outside of the Institute, Clary waiting on the steps with reinforcements. Some of them looked vaguely familiar, at least what he saw of them before his vision began to swim and the pretty stained glass became a smear of light. It was a damned good thing he was already kneeling as it meant he had a shorter distance to fall from when he fully collapsed.

He awoke laid out on a very uncomfortable bed with several annoying beeps all around him. His magic was the barest ripple under his skin, but was steadily returning. There was a presence to his right so he turned his head in that direction to find Jace slumped in a chair. His skin was still ashen and the dark circles under his eyes seemed to have grown darker circles of their own. “You look like crap,” he said by way of greeting.

Jace chuckled, a harsh and grating sound that nearly turned into a cough at the end. “Just for that, I should give you a mirror so you can see yourself,” the blond countered. 

Magnus huffed because it was expected, but resisted the urge to snap his fingers and make himself presentable again. For one, it would be a use of the magic he may well still need for healing a certain other, and for the other, he wasn’t positive he wouldn’t make himself look like a member of an eighties heavy metal band versus his usual subtle grace.

Thinking of that certain other, he tried to push himself upright, annoyed when his arms barely supported his own weight. More annoyed when the near zombie before him grabbed him before he could fall and helped him up into an almost sitting position, but not without the required grumbling.

“He’s right here and expected to make a full recovery,” Jace promised before he stepped back to allow him to see behind him. He had apparently taken up residence between the two beds in the Infirmary to keep an eye on them both at the same time. In the bed behind him lay a very washed out and very much struggling to stay awake Alexander.

“Magnus?” a weakened version of the voice he loved so much asked.

“Right here, my love,” he replied, ignoring the eye roll from the parabatai between them.

“Seriously, you both need to rest, the lovey dovey shit can wait ‘til later,” Jace huffed. It was followed immediately by, “But, seeing how neither of you will actually do that, I’ll go see if your allowed to, I don’t know, eat or something since you’re both finally breathing on your own.”

Jace stepped away to give them their moment and Magnus questioned why he grabbed his chair to take with him, right up until his own gurney lurched to the side and skidded until it was flush up against the other one. “Don’t say I never did anything for you,” Jace muttered, far too winded from the simple task but disappearing before Magnus could call him on it.

Magnus reached across the small remaining space and the uneasiness that had taken up residence in his soul from the moment he had first listened to that damned voicemail seemed to finally fade to the background when his fingers were able to touch a living, breathing, injured but whole Alexander Lightwood.

It was over some slightly rubbery eggs and a glass of orange juice with far too much pulp for his liking that he got the full story. Of how Alexander and the warlock tumbled through the portal together, tied by the blade as much as the grappling hands. Of how the warlock collapsed and Alec had thought he was dead as much as he himself was dying in an unknown hideaway so he made the call. Of how the warlock readied one last shot so he readied one of his own, a final arrow to knock him down. Of how the spell still flew forth and managed to hit him and send him flailing at the same time. Of how he remembered hitting the ground and then being seized and held unmoving while his world faded to black only to wake up in the Infirmary alive and whole.

“So you were mistaken on multiple counts,” Magnus said haughtily because he could, because it might possibly cover the fear and nightmares that would probably haunt him for far longer than he would ever admit to anyone.

“Didn’t die,” Alec agreed with an admittedly weak smile.

“And we still managed to have breakfast together,” Magnus pointed out triumphantly. “Though, next time, I get to choose. No offense, but the cafe on Fifth makes much better omelets.”

Alec’s chuckle might well have been enough to keep those nightmares at bay. For a little while, at least.

Later, after both had a chance to recharge and pretend to look presentable, after dear Isabelle ruined her usually perfect eyeliner, after they were allowed home to thoroughly check each other over without prying eyes, they simply held each other, reassured each other that they were alive. Later still, after he had talked his lover into not returning to work, at least not yet, Alexander caught him with his phone in his hand, thumb hovered over a certain button.

“I am sorry, you know,” Alec said, voice a whisper but this time not from pain or misuse. “For worrying you. For you having to see me like that.” He leaned into the hand that gently cupped his face, turned his head slightly to press a kiss to the palm.

He replayed the message.

There was heartbreak in every word. There was an apology. There was an attempt to say goodbye.

“I thought this would be the last time I heard your voice,” he admitted.

“So did I.” Alec kissed him again to take the sting out of his words. Carefully, hesitantly, he reached forward and took the phone from his hands, and Magnus let him.

He deleted the message.


End file.
